SpaceX Shares Teeter Near Record Low as Starship Abort and Lock-Up Overhang Widen a $1 Trillion Rout

The euphoria that accompanied SpaceX’s stock market debut in June has all but evaporated. Shares closed at €108.40 on Friday, leaving the equity down 34.8% over the past 30 days and hugging its 52-week low of €107.34, a mark set only on July 17. The slide has erased roughly $1 trillion in market value — the company’s capitalization tumbled from a peak of $2.64 trillion on June 16 to around $1.63 trillion, knocking it from the fourth-largest publicly traded company to ninth place. Elon Musk, its founder, has consequently lost his trillionaire status. Two forces are driving the rout: a bungled Starship test and the approaching expiration of a lock-up agreement that threatens to flood the market with new supply.

The immediate trigger for Friday’s 5.39% drop was the last-minute abort of Starship’s 13th test flight at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas. Telemetry showed that four Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed to ignite during the countdown sequence. Musk later confirmed two of those engines need replacement, and the company has set Monday, July 20, as the next attempt, with a 90-minute launch window opening at 6:45 p.m. Eastern time. The mission, Flight 13, carries enormous weight: it would be only the second outing for the upgraded V3 version of the rocket and the first since the ill-fated May flight that ended with a booster landing failure and multiple engine issues. A clean run would see Super Heavy separate from the Ship upper stage, perform a full boost-back burn, and land softly in the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship deploys a batch of operational Starlink V3 satellites, reignites a Raptor in orbit for the first time, and splashes down in the Indian Ocean. The stakes are amplified by NASA’s reliance on Starship for the Artemis IV moon landing, targeted for 2028, and by competition from Blue Origin for the same missions.

Financial markets have not been kind in the meantime. Short interest in SpaceX’s floating shares has ballooned to roughly 30%, and short sellers have already booked an estimated $4 billion in paper profits. The bond market is flashing similar caution: the yield on SpaceX’s 30-year notes has climbed from 6.7% to 7.4%, pushing the price down to 91% of par, while credit-default swaps have widened to 158 basis points. The overhang from the upcoming lock-up expiration adds another layer of pressure. After the company reports second-quarter earnings in early August, some 900 million shares that were locked up at the IPO will become eligible for trading, a potential supply glut the market is beginning to price in.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?

Wall Street is deeply split on what the stock is actually worth. Morningstar puts fair value at just $63, well below even the current level of roughly $122 per share — the U.S. equivalent of the Friday close — which itself has already broken through the $135 IPO price. MoffettNathanson rates the stock neutral with a $131 target, while Raymond James issues a strong buy and an $800 price objective. The consensus among analysts stands at $235.34, with about 80% recommending a buy. Yet the wide dispersion — from $63 to $800 — underscores the uncertainty surrounding the company’s path to profitability.

Bullish arguments rest squarely on Starlink. The satellite-internet division generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, posted an EBITDA margin of 63%, and signed up more than 10 million subscribers. But that strength is offset by a group-wide net loss of $4.9 billion last year and a price-to-sales ratio that, even after the sell-off, still hovers around 100 times. For every bull pointing to Starlink’s unit economics, a bear counters with the broader balance sheet and the technical hurdles Starship still faces — only seven of twelve previous test flights have succeeded, a 58% hit rate.

All eyes now turn to Monday evening in Texas. The 14-day relative strength index sits at 34.6, signaling oversold conditions, and the 30-day annualized volatility of 93.16% underscores how sharply the stock swings around each update from Starbase. A successful launch on the first retry could provide a much-needed stabilization signal, while another abort would almost certainly push shares deeper into record-low territory. For a company that has lost more than $1 trillion in market value in a month, the next few hours from the Gulf Coast may well determine whether the momentum shifts — or the decline accelerates further.

Ad

SpaceX Stock: New Analysis - 19 July

Fresh SpaceX information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.

Read our updated SpaceX analysis...

en | US84615Q1031 | SPACEX | boerse | 69799307 |